Wednesday, July 13, 2016

THE PATRIOT POST - ALEXANDER'S COLUMN 07/13/2016

The Left's War on Cops

In
the Democrats' political playbook, fomenting disunity to rally
constituencies is goal #1 — dead police are just collateral damage.
Black Lies Matter!

By Mark Alexander ·
July 13, 2016

"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure
government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the
manners and spirit of a people, which preserve a republic in vigor. A
degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws
and constitution." —Thomas Jefferson (1787)

(Publisher's Note: See Disclaimer)
Barack Obama and his Leftist cadres have been waging a war on cops since his first day in office — part of their politics of disparity playbook strategy to divide and conquer America one constituency group at the time.
Beginning with the 2009 arrest of his friend Henry Louis Gates, when Obama declared the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" — saying this before he had any of the facts — he has co-opted numerous altercations between law enforcement and black citizens to use as "race bait"
for his political agenda. He has continuously fomented racial discord
in order to maintain the Left's stranglehold on the black vote.
This has been particularly evident in his second term, when he politicized the chokehold death of career criminal Eric Garner in New York, the utterly justifiable shooting of violent hoodlum Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the death of drug dealer Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
Of course, it is the false "hands up, don't shoot" narrative from the Brown case that gave rise to the so-called "Black Lives Matter" hate group leading the charge against police nationwide and providing inspiration for the Dallas attack.
(Note: When there was a shortage of high-profile police-involved
deaths to further Obama's racial division agenda, Obama resorted to
other incidents like the case of "White-Hispanic" George Zimmerman, who was exonerated in the shooting death of a black assailant in Florida.)
It is no small irony that Obama has occupationally profiled cops the way he says cops have racially profiled blacks.
There has been a heavy price to pay, both in terms of injured and murdered police officers and the "Ferguson Effect,"
in which cops reduce their enforcement efforts to protect against
racially trumped-up charges — resulting in significant increases of
black-on-black violent crime.
So it was business as usual seven days ago, July 7, when Obama
interrupted his press conference at a foreign NATO summit to advance his
racially divisive agenda with two recent police shootings:
"All Americans should be deeply troubled by the fatal shootings of
Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon
Heights, Minnesota. We've seen such tragedies far too many times. ...
What's clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents.
They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal
justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system
year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law
enforcement and too many of the communities they serve. ... All
Americans should recognize the anger, frustration and grief that so many
Americans are feeling... Michelle and I share those feelings."
A few hours later, BO addressed the five racially motivated murders
of Dallas police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith,
Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa. Six other officers and two
civilians were wounded. The assailant was a black racist named Micah X.
Johnson.
Changing from his earlier tone of disunity to unity, Obama said, "I
believe that I speak for every single American when I say that we are
horrified over these events, and that we stand united with the people
and the police department in Dallas."
He then declared, "I think it's very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter." Huh?
It wasn't so hard for Dallas Police Chief David Brown to "untangle
the motives" of this mass murderer. "He seemed lucid during
negotiations," Brown said. "He expressed anger for Black Lives Matter.
The suspect said he was upset at white people. He said he wanted to kill
white people, especially white police officers."
Obviously, the Dallas assassin did not believe Blue Lives Matter.

Of course, BO had to throw in more race bait: "[We should be]
concerned, as all Americans, about racial disparities in our criminal
justice system..."
Then, predictably, he pivoted to gun control: "We also know that when
people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately it makes attacks
like these more deadly and more tragic. And in the days ahead, we're
going to have to consider those realities as well."
The heir-apparent to Obama's legacy of hate, Hillary Clinton,
insisted that white people "have to start listening to the legitimate
cries that are coming from our African-American fellow citizens."
BO's attorney general, Loretta Lynch, took a page from his former AG, Eric Holder,
insisting, "We must continue working to guarantee every person in this
country equal justice under the law. We must take a hard look at the
ease with which wrongdoers can get their hands on deadly weapons and the
frequency with which they use them."On Sunday,
he issued a challenge to police departments to stop being racist: "I
would hope that, uh, police organizations, uh, are respectful of the
frustrations that people in these communities feel."
That earned him a quick rebuke from William Johnson, executive
director of the National Association of Police Organizations: "This
president and his administration absolutely do not have our back and
make our jobs more dangerous."
Recall that in February of this year, Obama convened a room full of
leftist race agitators, including reps of Black Lives Matter, and
praised them for being "much better organizers" than he was. He also
noted that he was "confident that they are going to take America to new
heights" because of their "degree of focus and seriousness and
constructiveness."
As former ABC chief White House correspondent Brit Hume observed,
"[Obama] has consistently chosen to see things through the eyes of an
aggrieved black activist rather than of a president of all the people.
He's not failed to speak out whenever a black is killed by a white
police officer, but has said next to nothing about the continued
slaughters of blacks by other blacks in the streets of Chicago,
Baltimore, and other cities. He has made his sympathy for the Black
Lives Matter movement obvious."
Indeed, as political analyst Jason Riley, himself a black man, noted in The Wall Street Journal,
"Obama has denounced what happened in Dallas, but he has also been
winking at a Black Lives Matter movement that has spent the past two
years holding rallies that call for (and sometimes feature) violence
against cops. [He] has made a habit of minimizing or ignoring the high black crime rates that obviously underlie tensions between poor minority communities and cops."
Three hours before the Dallas attack, BO declared, "Right now the big
concern is the fact that the data shows black folks are more vulnerable
to these kinds of incidents."
But that's one of Obama's rhetorical lies.
There is no evidence that the "racist cop" claims of Obama and others are borne out in police shooting data, and as researcher John Lott notes,
Obama's claim that "African Americans are arrested at twice the rate of
whites" does not take into account that "blacks commit murder at almost
six times the rate whites do."
Further, according to Lott, "The assault rate for the general public
in the United States is 229 per 100,000 people. But the rate police were
assaulted that year was 9,300 per 100,000 officers — a rate 41 times
higher. ... This data also suggests that police are not actively looking
for excuses to fire their weapons. The number of justifiable killings
by police equals less than one percent of the assaults on police. Thus
even when assaulted, police rarely resort to killing their attackers."
In a new Harvard study, "Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,"
the lead researcher, professor Roland Fryer Jr., noted, "On the most
extreme use of force — officer-involved shootings — we find no racial
differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken
into account." Fryer, who is black, added that the findings were "the
most surprising result of my career."
As for police who do kill their assailants, according to Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the rate of black officers who kill black offenders
is 32 per 100,000 black officers, which is more than twice the rate of
white officers who kill black offenders — 14 per 100,000 white officers.

Let me share a little secret.
Having spent years as a street cop early in my career, I can tell you
that when 95% of murder victims in urban centers are "people of color,"
and 95% of perpetrators are "people of color," cops of any color
are going to be more cautious with "people of color." This isn't
"racism," this is reality, driven by a desire to make the community safe
and to return home at the end of that day's tour.
Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald, author of "The War on Cops,"
recently responded to BO's repeated assertions about "racist cops,"
declaring, "Obama embraced the Black Lives Matter myth that there is a
racist war by white officers against black civilians in this country.
... In fact, there's no government agency more dedicated to the
proposition that black lives matter than the police. Proactive policing
has saved tens of thousands of minority lives since the mid-1990s."
That notwithstanding, in the days following the Dallas attack, there were attempts to murder police in Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Baton Rouge and Washington, DC. Additionally, San Antonio's police headquarters was fired on multiple times, but thankfully there were no injuries.
Perhaps Obama/Clinton constituents should pause to consider what
would happen if police officers in urban centers across the nation came
down with a weeks-long case of "blue flu" and didn't show up for work.
Those cities would turn into bloodbaths. Of course, some of their
constituents are advocating just that. Black agitator and Obama/Clinton
supporter Jessica Disu insists, "We need to abolish the police. Period."
When asked who would provide protection, Disu insisted, "We need to
come up with community solutions."
In Dallas on Tuesday,
there was an interfaith memorial for the slain officers. Police Chief
David Brown spoke for three minutes. Former President George W. Bush
spoke for seven minutes. Barack Obama spoke for 40 minutes, referencing
himself 45 times.
Obama offered fitting references to the slain officers, references to
Scripture and then resorted to more race-bait rhetoric. I have posted
excerpts from their remarks here.
Disgracefully, in the first sentence of Obama's memorial remarks, he
made a joke — "I'm so glad I met Michelle first because she loves Stevie
Wonder." This was a reference to Dallas Police Chief David Brown's
recitation of lyrics from a song. Obama left a long pause for laughter.

Equally offensive were Obama's thematic race-bait assertions.
Allow me to respond to one: "We know that centuries of racial
discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn't
simply vanish with the law against segregation. ... America, we know
that bias remains."
The fact is, Obama and his ilk, who are the purveyors of "black privilege,"
have ensured that racial bias has endured for generations. BO's black
father had no roots in America, so he has no generational "black
experience." But allow me to offer a few words from those whose roots
run deep.
At the conclusion of the War Between the States, famous abolitionist
Frederick Douglass wrote, "Everybody has asked the question, and they
learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What shall we do with the
negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with
us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. ... [If]
the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall. ... All I ask is,
give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!"
Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University, was among the
last generation of black people born into institutional slavery prior to
emancipation. Washington became a leading advocate for the rights of
blacks — and of all people.
In his 1911 work, "My Larger Education," he wrote, "There is a class
of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the
wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having
learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they
have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly
because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these
people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not
want to lose their jobs. ... There is a certain class of race-problem
solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the
disease holds out they have an easy medium through which to make
themselves prominent before the public."
In the footsteps of Booker Washington followed Carter G. Woodson
(1875-1950), an esteemed historian, author, journalist and the founder
of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Woodson is most often cited as "the father of black history," and this
passage from his seminal work, "The Mis-Education of the Negro," is
representative of his thinking: "If the Negro in the ghetto must
eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will
never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto."

Fact is, Democrats have masterfully maintained the black ghetto
welfare plantation through policies that ensure they will "never become
strong enough to get out of the ghetto."
Carrying on the legacy of Washington and Woodson today is Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who notes: "Government cannot make us
equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before
the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in
part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that
under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the
basis of race."
Thomas speaks precisely to those concerns expressed 150 years ago by Frederick Douglass.
Today, the truth is that if black lives really mattered to those charged with advancing the Democrat political agenda, Obama, Clinton and their leftist cadres of race hustlers would stop the institutional enslavement of black people on the urban poverty plantations created by their failed "Great Society" experiments. For Obama and Clinton, it's more aptly stated, "Black LIES Matter."
And a final observation from President Ronald Reagan:
"We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is
guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American
precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."Disclaimer: This column is not written from the
armchair perspective of inbred Beltway journalists and commentators. It
is written, as always, from the grassroots perspective. Notably, it is
also written from the vantage point of having graduated from a state
police academy at age 19, having served through my college years as a
uniformed police officer in three states, and having maintained close
ties with the men and women in blue ever since. During those years, and
in other capacities since, I have been in many situations that required
split-second life-or-death decisions. If you haven't been in the shoes
of officers involved in pressure-packed and highly volatile
altercations, you simply can't understand the context of those incidents
based on edited videos. Police officers are human, and they
occasionally make mistakes — sometimes deadly ones. BUT THOSE ARE RARE
EXCEPTIONS. To that end, watch the transformation of a protestor who steps into the role of a police officer. And to better understand how fast a traffic stop can go wrong, click here.Share
Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis